The past year has been a mixed bag for the commercial space industry, with successful launches from the likes of SpaceX, but also a few mishaps, including a tragic Virgin Galactic crash that claimed the life of one pilot.

When you think of satellites, you may think of the Space Shuttle extending its robot arm with a huge piece of high-tech equipment waiting to pirouette into orbit. This misconception is similar to picturing huge mainframes when thinking about computers.

The main driver of all weather and climate, the entity which occupies 99.86% of all of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of fire in the sky – has gone quiet again during what is likely to be the weakest sunspot cycle in more than a centu

3 years ago, the Red Planet put on a bit of a show for anyone with a telescope big enough, and an eye trained enough, to spot. As the Terra Cimmeria region of Mars' Southern Hemisphere rotated into view, a faint bulge rose above

However, soon I obtained graphics software and started investigating direct in the science data for myself much closer and more carefully. I quickly determined that the "tubes" were actually a long line of many side-by-side short ridges parallel to

"Yes, we can confirm that it is something on Ceres that reflects more sunlight, but what that is remains a mystery," Marc Rayman, mission director and chief engineer for the Dawn mission, told Space.com in an email.
The new images show areas o

Drama abounded when Europe's Philae probe landed on a comet last November?"especially when the lander bounced a half mile into the air before its final touchdown, then quickly lost power.
But Philae's mother ship, the European Space Agency's

The lunar landscape is attractive for possible mining activities, and the presence of the polar water ice has "more than anything else… kindled interest in mining the moon," Corfield explained Monday in a statement, "for where there is ice, there i